Speaking of tiny, incremental improvements, Erica Sadun over at TUAW highlight a new addition some developers are seeing when entering iTunes Connect — a submission history:

Appearing near recently reviewed items, this option opens a detail table showing how your application has worked its way through the App Store review process, and on to the shelf. Stormont details this update on his site.

Sadun also states that the amber status bubbles are slightly more verbose now, adding “waiting for review” for the freshest uploads.

If you’re a developer and you’re seeing these, or any other changes in iTunes Connect, let us know, and let us know what you think about them, and what else you’d like to see.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iTunes Connect Adds “Submission History” for Developers

Apple has gone out of their way to point out the cons of multi-tasking background applications — a claimed 80% reduction in battery life while on standby with a single 3rd party IM client enabled. Push Notification, likewise, has been promoted by Apple as providing a single point of coordination for 3rd party alerts routed through servers on Apple’s end.

But unlike the code-once, release-done model of background processing for a single app, Push Notification requires developers to create a server system on their end as well, one that’s constantly and reliably available to send alerts to Apple, and scales to an iPhone and iPod touch user base already exceeding 30 million units.

Ars Technica’s Erica Sadun goes into detail on the process and problems:

Consider an application with just 10,000 users. It might service a million uses per day, assuming update checks every 15 minutes. More time-critical uses might demand checks every few minutes or even several times a minute. As the computational burden builds, so do the hosting costs. While cloud computing provides an excellent match to these kinds of needs, that kind of solution comes with a real price in development, maintenance, and day-to-day operations.

For more on additional issues, like security, and whether or not small developers will even be able to afford to implement Push Notification, check out the rest of the article.

Any developers out there avoiding Push Notification for just those reasons? What could Apple do to help you out? Offer a hosting system for small developers on Apple’s end?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Push Notification a Burden to Small Developers?

Ars Technica’s iPhone wonder woman, Erica Sadun, has put together what must be the first expert level how-to: Pushing tweets to your iPhone with Apple Push notifications

Ars shows you how to create a Push-based Twitter update notification system for the iPhone without actually showing you any of the details due to the ongoing NDA. (But don’t worry, we tell you exactly where to find the instructions.)

Nin. Ja.

Now if you need help getting your code on, it just so happens that the Stanford iPhone Application Development course (the one being offered via iTunes U) looks like it has “make your own Twitter client” on the agenda.

Ready? Set? Push Tweet!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

How To: Roll Your Own Twitter Push Notification App

With the iPhone OS 3.0 Preview coming this Tuesday, March 17, the question will inevitably become: when’s it shipping?!

However, Erica Sadun over at Ars Technica, in an article designed to help developers better target their firmware requirements, shows some interesting data on what firmware releases iPhone owners are actually using… and it isn’t always the latest.

iPhone users likely keep up to date more than almost any other smartphone platform on the planet simply because Apple and iTunes make it so drop dead simple to find out about, and install the OS updates. But even so, Sadun’s article shows not everyone is doing it:

The data, covering one week and provided by Headlight Software, showed no one on 1.x (thank Jobs for that!), less than 2% total on 2.0.x, less than 7% on 2.1.x, 26.61% on 2.2, and a whopping 65.49% on the current firmware, 2.2.1 released January 27.

So two-thirds on the latest/greatest firmware, just over a quarter on the previous release (yellowsn0w unlockers accounting for some of that, we suspect), and few stragglers back in the stone ages of 2.0.

As important as this information is for developers trying to figure out how to target their requirements, we’re also just plain curious. We figure TiPb readers are some of the smartest iPhone folks on the planet. So let us know, are you on the most recent iPhone OS 2.2.1 version, or are you deliberately staying on 2.2 for now? Anyone just not care about firmware and sticking with an older version that “just works” for you?

And how many would upgrade to 3.0 in a heartbeat the instant Apple dropped it?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

What iPhone Firmware are You Running?

The Situation: Developers who signed up for Apple’s iPhone SDK Beta and iTunes Connect program last year are coming up on their 1 year renewal deadline.

The Problem: Apple has no mechanism in place to handle such renewals.

The solution: Er… there is none — yet. But in the meantime, Ars Technica’s Erica Sadun reports:

Apple has now e-mailed iPhone developers to extend their memberships until July 11, 2009. A short-term solution to the problem is good, but it shows that Apple is still working out the longer-term details.

Here’s hoping them details get worked out soon rather than later.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone SDK Beta/iTunes Connect Contracts Extended to July 11

Almost a year ago, Apple held their iPhone SDK Roadmap Event and unleashed the App Store concept on the world. Developers signed up for iTunes Connect contracts, and now their first year is almost up and they need to renew.

One problem: Apple doesn’t yet have a renewal process in place.

Wha-wha-wha-what? Erica Sadun over at Ars Technica (following an article in Apple Insider) looked into it and found the right side of the Apple didn’t seem to know from the left:

When we explained that we were looking both to renew ADC memberships and to update iTunes Connect contracts, the representative instructed us to send a query to devcontracts@apple.com. [...] We did in fact contact the iTunes Connect e-mail address, who wrote back to us saying, “Please refer to the Contact Us links at the bottom of iTunes Connect. devprograms should be able to assist you.” Apparently 1 Infinite Loop does not just refer to a corporate street address.

Yikes! Hopefully — for the sake of developers and those of us who want to continue seeing apps in the App Store — Apple will sort this right quick.

Any developers manage to get a better answer from Apple?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Store Devs: Renew Your Contracts… When Apple’s Good and Ready to Let Ya!

There are no demos available in the App Store, we know this. No try before you buy, no download now, pay later. According to Erica Sadun at Ars Technica, even mentioning demo in your verbiage, like beta, will get you a swift kick in the rejection button. Free “Lite” versions are the only way to go.

Zach Epstein over on the Boy Genius Report wonders out loud why Apple, in its infinite usability, can’t create a mechanism where Apps get downloaded free, and then expire after a short period of time unless you decide to buy and keep them.

So, does Apple really not know how to handle App Store demos yet? Or do they suspect, as TiPb does, f that demos would kill the $0.99 novelty App (and CrApp) impulse-buy business dead? After all, how many would really not tire of the gags before the demo period expired?

I’ll fess up that the Lil John “YEAH!” “OKAY!” “WHAT!” travesty App would never have eaten my $0.99 had there been a demo! What percentage of Apps you’ve bought, do you think having had a demo period wouldn’t have made sure you didn’t buy instead?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

How Should Apple Handle App Store Demos?

As revealed by Craig Hockenberry on Twitter shortly after today’s iPhone OS 2.2.1 update: developers hadn’t heard a whisper of this release, no beta, not even a warning, and it wasn’t compatible with the previous SDK. Nice, Apple!

It should come as some relief, then, that the iPhone SDK has now also been bumped to 2.2.1. Says Ars Technica’s Erica Sadun:

In all likelihood, the 2.2.1 SDK is, as suggested, a simple bug update without any significant API changes.

So not much different from the iPhone OS 2.2.1 then?

Of course, with such a minor point release we can’t really expect anything revolutionary (we’ll likely need 3.0 for that). But Apple has been known to sneak some early clues into frameworks, so hopefully we’ll find something to look forward to once the deep code divers get through tearing this one apart.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Releases iPhone SDK 2.2.1

Not only has the iPhone 3G finally been unlocked, it’s now also been hacked to work with a Blue Tooth keyboard. Sure, it’s not the elegant, Apple, “it just works” solution the world at large has been waiting for, but a “it’s hard work” solution for those desperate and ingenious enough to tackle it. Ars Technica’s Erica Sadun breaks down the solution:

For the external approach, Ackermann modified a Robotech Bluetooth module, which he placed in an iPhone battery sleeve and connected to the iPhone (serial) connector port at the bottom of the unit. This allowed the the phone to communicate directly with the the module using the Bluetooth serial port profile.

And you can find out more at Ackermann’s blog, if you want to try it yourself. Do you? Or are you waiting (and waiting…) on Apple?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Hard Keyboard… the Hard Way

A week or so ago we linked to Erica Sadun’s demo of the iPhone SDK’s undocumented video out feature. Well, she’s been busy since then talking with Freeverse, the developers behind the hit Moto Chaser game for the iPhone. The result? The tech demo featured above.

Good news is that the possibilities are mind-boggling. Bad news is that we’re not there yet:

On the 2G touch, Moto Chaser can reach approximately 20 frames per second. This makes the game, in the words of Freeverse Producer Bruce Morrison, “nearly playable.” Morrison manages the Freeverse product teams and was heavily involved in developing Moto Chaser; he designed all the levels in the game. The norm for commercial games is 30fps, a point at which motion becomes as smooth and watchable as normal TV video. For reference, the current iPhone release of Moto Chaser runs at 26fps and includes many optimizations to achieve even that on the iPhone’s relatively slow processor and limited RAM memory.

Check out the rest of the article for look into how they did it, how long it took, and where they might go from here…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Play Moto Chaser for iPhone… on Your TV?!